
Should you de-connect your connected devices?
From sports brands to pharmaceutical corporations, companies worldwide are gathering more data than ever due to boost of Internet connected devices now integrated into their IT infrastructure.
By May 2018, new European Union rules related to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will go into effect and could potentially interfere with companies that bank on collecting and processing user data for their businesses.
So, what’s the problem?
The dilemma for these companies experimenting with Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins with profiling, which is essentially the ability for companies to use automation to determine certain characteristics of their individual users.
When companies use data analytics and related automation technologies to predict whether someone is likely to be a good worker or be more prone to a specific illness, that business is taking part in profiling.
“Companies need to carefully determine how to use their various types of data for different purposes that don’t potentially put them at risk of a violation. In some cases, that may mean a company should leave out certain demographic data when debuting a specific service overseas.”
Executives of major tech companies like Cisco and Microsoft are advocating for the technology community to “explain very well” complex and misunderstood AI technologies to policy makers who may be ill-informed.
As the EU prides itself on protecting the personal data of an individual, these companies conducting business in the Europe must be extremely cautious with how they handle and process their customer data.
Read more on Fortune: http://fortune.com/2017/02/14/google-microsoft-cisco-privacy-profiling-artificial-intelligence/
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